November 2, 2020
Come Down
Nehemiah 6:3
Up went the walls! Such was the drive, the determination, and the discipline of Nehemiah that it took only fifty-two days to accomplish the task, less than two months. But it was not without opposition. One of the wiles of the foe was to try to lure Nehemiah away. We note the proposal: “Come,” said Sanballat and Geshem to the Jewish leader. “Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages” (Neh. 6:2). The proposal would have meant a journey of at least twenty-five miles. “They thought to do me mischief,” Nehemiah said. He saw right through their somewhat transparent plot.
We note also the priority. “I am doing a great work,” said Nehemiah, “so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave 1t, and come down to you?” (v. 3). And that was that. So far as Nehemiah was concerned, nothing mattered more than completing the repair of Jerusalem’s walls.
It is important to have our priorities right. Nehemiah knew perfectly well that no meeting with the enemy could be productive because Nehemiah’’s priority was nonnegotiable. There are many such things that we must hold as nonnegotiable—the truth of the inerrancy of Scripture, for instance, or any of the other great cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. There is no point in even discussing them with the enemies of the gospel since we have no room for compromise on any of these things.
Now let us note the parallel, for this whole story can be lifted from its Old Testament setting and put down in a New Testament one—similar but profoundly more significant. It is the same place we have in view, the city of Jerusalem, but a completely different period of tame.
The scene is set on a skull-shaped hill not far from Jerusalem’s wall, and the enemy is there in full force. Three crosses have been raised against the sky, and the anguish they represent can barely be imagined. On the center cross we see the Son of God. The mocking multitudes ignore the two thieves, for after all they were just common criminals paying for their crimes. The malice of both the mob and the masters of Israel is directed toward the one who claimed to be the Son of God. The claim, they thought, was clearly incredible. But it made a good jest as well as a good test: “If thou be the Son of God,” they said, “come down to us. Then we’ll believe you.” Nothing happened. No word passed His lips. Indeed, He had no need to speak, His answer had been on record for centuries. Nehemiah had spoken the words, and Jesus simply rested on them: “I am doing a great work,” He might have said. “I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it and come down to you?
And what a great work it was! He was securing eternal salvation for a countless multitude by bearing the sins of the world in His body on the tree. He was purchasing redemption for lost Adam’s fallen race. He was working out a plan agreed upon by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before ever time began. Why, indeed, should the work cease while He came down from ‘that cross to satisfy the idle curiosity of a disbelieving crowd? No! He stayed there, where He was, until the work was done, Then He spoke. “It is finished,” He said. And so it was. We thank Him for it to this very day.